magic spot nucleotides
magic spot nucleotides
A popular term for a pair of spots which, when first described, were of unknown nature (i.e., “magic”), seen on thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and later identified as guanosine 5’-diphosphate 3’-diphosphate (ppGpp) and guanosine 5’-triphosphate 3’-diphosphate (pppGpp).The two nucleotides accumulate during the stringent response reaction in bacteria, in which multiple metabolic pathways shut down when one or more amino acids are present in limited quantities.